Man am I glad I don't work with you. You don't see a problem with insulting a total stranger out of the blue for being (admitedly very) wrong, but are willing to admit your insult was inprecise. You must be a lonely, lonely person.
By the way I did notice the link but since typing Ghostscript into google gets you the same, I'd say that is redundant.
Okay, you're degenerating into personal attacks so it's time to quit. I did want to mention a couple of things though.
Wrong on both counts. I did not degenerate into a personal attack at all (except for one, to demonstrate a point), and you have a funny way of quitting.
I don't think it's helpful to tell them it's fine, everyone does it or something to that effect, though. Take my student. If I tell him, no worries, you write fine!...
Did I suggest you tell him it's fine? You didn't say he was YOUR student. You said a student. How was I to know if he's your classmate or your pupil. (Speaking of precise communication!) If he's your student that falls under it being a professional application. If I recall correctly I said you should be getting this student help, and having him assessed for learning difficulties.
Telling him to snap out of it and stop being lazy about language is going to be no help at all.
I can think of at least one creative way to demonstrate how inappropriate imprecise language can be. Give him a fake imprecise assessment/report. When he complains that he doesn't understand what the grade is, give him a better written one. Then point out that he could be teaching in 10 years and that's what his students will feel like.
The point is that accepting things will not improve them. Take your alcoholic. If everyone says "hey, everybody drinks! Bottoms up!" he'll never address his problem. What he needs is a friend to come along and say "you have a problem. You need to do something about it. I'll help if I can."
And if you know anything about alcoholics you can't force them to admit to the problem. You can be honest and tell them they have a problem but you can't make them get help.
By the way, I'd say definitions 2 and 3 of tolerate are most appropriate. Respect the person and endure their faults. This doesn't mean you can't help them improve if they choose to let you.
You can take what I say on board, or you can keep arguing (insisting that it's time to quit of course). That's up to you. If I were a troll I wouldn't be suggesting how you help your student.
"Idiot. Ghostsript" is modded informative? What the hell is/. coming to? Rude ridiculous childish remarks and abusive behaviour are encouraged. That's insane. I don't care how knowledgable you are, or how wrong someone is, starting off by calling them an idiot is just ridiculous.
That is precisely my point. This student insists there's nothing wrong with his writing
Gee there's something new in human history. Denial that there's a problem.
If he has a learning disability then he needs to take responsibility, admit there's a problem and get some help for it or his scientific career is going to be very short.
Agreed that he needs to admit there's a problem. But that's often easier said than done. That's like saying every alcoholic and drug addict should just get over it and stop drinking/using then there would be no problem. Strictly speaking that's entirely true. However, if the person found it was an easy problem to overcome they wouldn't be there in front of you with the condition.
This person may not even be suited to a science career. Just like most people aren't suited to be a doctor or a pilot.
That's no excuse for being hypercritical. You no doubt have your own imperfections, some of which you work on harder than others. There are consequences for not getting aspects of your life right - fail to organise paying your bills and you'll end up with bad credit for example. However if you fail to speak to your friends using correct grammar it's not so serious. (Turning in a chem paper that's incomprehensible deserves a failing grade. That's the consequence. Enough of them, and you either find a different way to do things, or you flunk the course). By the way did you know Einstein failed math due in large part to his dyslexia? Fortunately for all of us he found a different way, and a very tolerant tutor.
Not to mention the student in question started the assignment the night before.
Yeah I hate that too. My fiancee does that sort of thing and I'm trying to get her to break the habit, but its hard. (She's a lot better at not putting things off to the last minute now because she knows I get upset. In fact her general disorganisation get to me, and we're working on it.). However I'll tell you what doesn't work - barking orders at her. Giving up on her doesn't work for me either, because despite her problems (surprise surprise no human being is perfect) she's an absolutely fantastic person - very artistic and I admire her ability in that area (where my skills are lets say limited despite my best efforts).
Having a disability, or even just not being good at something important like communicating doesn't mean you should get an unconditional free pass. It means you're going to have to work a bit harder. The rest of us should support you however we can sure, but you have to put in an effort. It definitely doesn't mean we should accept poor standards from those who are capable of better either.
That's the point. You're setting yourself up as judge of what is and isn't difficult for someone and to what degree, when quite frankly you have no experience in their problems and basically don't know what you're talking about!
Some people can work at it all they like and they'll never be world class atheletes, artists, musicians, scientists etc.
Was it your girlfriend who's dyslexic? Next time someone points out an error you make in your writing tell them (and make sure she hears) "whatever, it's not my fault, I'm probably dyslexic or something. I'm not going to bother fixing it because you should all just respect that I might have a disability." Don't forget to duck when she hits you.
It was my fiancee. I see you haven't even bothered to pay attention (or re-read my post), yet you're being hypocritical and ranting about how important communication is. See how nice that feels? Someone else jumping up and down criticising you. I could just as easily have said "no it was my fiancee" and moved on. Emphasising a person's weaknesses and mistakes is completely unhelpful. You certainly won't get the chance to help them if you put them off side to begin with. In fact you'll be generally disliked and will be the poorer for it.
Also your analogy is awful. My fiancee KNOWS I'm not dyslexic, and it's
I read a lab report by an undergraduate biochemistry student the other day that was incomprehensible. I'm not talking about a few mixed up words or reversed letters or misspellings. The writing was totally incoherent, the product of near or actual functional illiteracy.
See now here's my only major problem with your argument. How on earth do you know that this biochem student doesn't have a learning disability? Has he or she been tested? Is he or she likely to actually tell you if they do have a problem and know it?
Totally incoherent writing is MORE likely to be indicative of a learning disability than just the odd mixed up letter here or there. Dyslexics do not just jumble letters and the odd word. For goodness sake go and educate yourself about these disabilities before you judge people. There's a very very good chance you should be sending this person to an adult reading class of some kind!!!
When someone says that languages are imprecise, it looks like an excuse for not being able to properly utilize the language.
Everyone uses words and language to convey meaning. If you're talking about professional applications by all means criticise. If you're talking about the man on the street trying to buy the morning paper, or any non-professional use of language, get off your high horse and be a little more tolerant.
Every language has a mathematical basis, in any case.
You're talking about the form and structure of every language being based on a grammar I suppose. That's a weak argument, since there are often dozens of exceptions to the rules, and since their is often multiple meanings for each word, which you better hope isn't happening in your mathematical work.
Unfortunately, mathematics and computer languages are not verbose enough to convey actual meaning. How does one say they are sad, when using math?
It's not the verbosity that's the problem. You could come up with a lexicon for "sad" in math or in a computer language, and use it to convey meaning so that's not what's getting in the way of using math or a computer language to be more precise. The problem is the very nature of their precision. Not everyone can grasp complex math, and most people don't want to. It would make life a LOT more difficult if we had to be more precise at the expense of being a lot more rigid and abstract with a more formal language.
No, you'd use a language that most people understood....and it would, by its very nature be imprecise.
And a writer with a decent knowledge of a language will use these imprecisions to their advantage - the true beauty of language lies in the fact that a sentence may have many different meanings, depending on the context.
Unfortunately, that "beauty" is the very antithesis of precision. It may be beauty in terms of art but it's a curse in terms of conveying factual meaning. When you formulate a sentence in an every day situation, you don't usually think of three different meanings. With practice you can minimise accidental ambiguity but for most people language is not a professions. When it comes to the written word, journalism and writing (creative and otherwise) that's then a professional application of language and judgement should be applied to misuse accordingly.
Interesting that you insist that you're qualified to assess who does and doesn't suffer a learning disability, who is and isn't dyslexic. I think if you knew the truth you might be surprised. Adults who are unable to read are often able to bluff their way through school etc. where there are qualified teachers supposedly supervising, but you seem to think you have a pretty good hit rate determining who is and isn't dyslexic. The simple fact is people are very good at hiding their problems, especially when they're ashamed of them, or feel stupid because of them.
You're right about the "entire dialects" - that is a cultural change to the language. You're not going to change that though, as people have done this since the dawn of speech to distinguish their group from others and give a feeling of belonging to their members. Not saying it doesn't annoy me sometimes too, but what I am saying is a little more tolerance of the general population would be a good thing. These aren't language specialists you're criticising, they're everyday people with varying levels of ability and education.
defending those who add new imprecision unknowingly... well, it's a practice I find objectionable.
That's a pity, but I don't think you realise just how difficult it is to be precise using everyday language. Looking at your own post: The word is imprecision (plural as well as singular) not imprecisions.
The problem is this. Different people are good at different things and have very different backgrounds. Requiring someone to be good at any one thing, or otherwise getting upset at them, is a silly way to go about things. Imagine being upset at every automobile driver that isn't a mechanic.
Language as a speciality is very different to language as an every day used form of communication. People will be imprecise, and when they are, you ask them to clarify. Most of the time, most people aren't oblivious to it, and simply haven't practiced the precision because it isn't their specialty.
Tolerance goes a lot further than playing grammar and spelling Nazi.
People with disabilities like dyslexia rarely advertise them. Do you know for a fact that most of the people you're bagging don't have the condition? If so how?
The entire point of writing (well, at least this form of writing; obviously, things like novels and poetry are a different story) is to express what you mean clearly and precisely so that people can understand you
Rubbish. If that were true you wouldn't use English, you'd use mathematics, or a computer language. English and just about every language in the world are by their very nature imprecise, open to multiple interpretations, and deeply entrenched in the culture of the day. People who think otherwise are living in a fantasy world.
Some people who confuse similar sounding aren't lazy, but are dyslexic. Most of the time you think about these people not being able to unjumble letters.
Btw my fiancee is dyslexic. She didn't learn to read properly until she was about 14 though. She's also very smart (holds 2 degrees and is now a primary teacher). I was doing a crossword with her to kill time the other day waiting to see a doctor and giving her a hard time about some of her mis-spellings, because they were quite funny. I don't think of her as having a problem most of the time because she's witty and intelligent and it's just not the first thing that strikes me. Then later I was watching a documentary and dyslexia was mentioned and I felt like a horse's rear. She tends to spell phoentically because that's how she copes - by sounding it out in her head. She has to work a lot harder to not make mistakes when she's teaching.
So yeah a little more education would go a long way but so would a little more tolerance.
This is modded up????/. has gone down the toilet. The guy was totally wrong, and deserved to have it pointed out, and perhaps even ridiculed, but come on a post that starts this way should never be modded up.
As for you phillymjs, though you were rude an arrogant, your explanation regarding IBM, Compaq and the PC was accurate enough as far as I can tell (and to be honest I can't be bothered researching the actual content for inconsistencies - the spirit of the argument was certainly spot on. However your last paragraph is absolute garbage...
Oh, by the way, a Mac can be bought for $500 that will use your existing display and (USB) keyboard-- it always cracks me up when you guys try to prop up your anti-Apple arguments by bitching about the price of their top-of-the-line hardware while conveniently ignoring their low-end machines.
A basic Mac can be bought for $500. So what. I can buy a second hand PC for less than $200 but it wouldn't be terribly useful to me if I wanted to run the latest games etc. The basic problem here is that if you want to buy a computer to run OSX there's nowhere to buy from Apple at an inflated price. This isn't bitching. If it's capable of running on the hardware, forcing customers to spend more time, money and physical space, is a complete waste of resources and an insult to the users.
Oh and another thing, my experience with Apple has not been good. I use to have an old IIe the salesman fooled my parents into buying when Macs had just come out. Apple also decided at the time that they wouldn't sell through retail chains anymore so as a kid I and my parents were stuck with an overpriced computer that I suddenly had to go to expensive specialist stores to buy software for. Years later I was put in charge of the eMac my employer bought as a test machine. With very little use it died in 2 weeks, and the troubleshooting and support services were awful. I did cave in last year and buy a couple of iPods (one for me and one for my fiance) but I kinda already regret that (even though I do think it's the best music player currently, it's too fragile and I've already had issues.). Apple's an arrogant company that puts the customer last and yet manages to have a good reputation amongst eliteist sheep users. They deserve what they get (as do I for buying those freakin iPods). Apple should have died a long time ago.
As others have pointed out ad blockers work with broadband too.
If you play computer games, watch videos, download music you generally find dialup isn't usable to grab some of those huge files. A 600Mb game update or a 70Meg video clip isn't going to be 50% ads, even when you consider all the clicking you might need to do to grab it.
If you're talking code snippets, use a well organised directory (one directory per set of related code/project, multiple versions under subdirectories). Biggest advantages: Highly portable and very simple. No reliance on other software Biggest disadvantages: Multiple versions are hard to manage.
I have to confess that since I'm not heavily involved in much hobby and open source work I still use a simple directory most of the time at home (and on my personal laptop). I'm sure some will laugh/scoff.
As you progress move to something like CVS. Biggest issue I have with this is portability. CVSNT (CVS on windows) is not the same as CVS. Cygwin's awkward to run. Access to the repository therefore relies on access to the server software (and a server attached to the current repository). You trade all of that hassle for access to multiple revisions and the ability to compare them easily (at least for ascii - CVS isn't great for binary).
At work our team uses CVS day to day.
Ideally the OS should come with a revisioning system of some description. (Hell VMS had a crude revisioning system built into the file system!). Linux kind of has it by default in the guise of CVS, but its not built into the file system (which I believe is a better way of doing things). Windows unfortunately has a poor cousin, and proprietary solutions. C'est la vie.
Basically, no matter what the students did to conserve, and what they did to increase the resources, the "world" pretty much always ran out of fuel and resources by the year 2020..... The geologist obliged, and let the students rerun the simulations with a magnitude of latitude, i.e., ten times the estimated resources were allocated! The results then?, about an additional 10 to 20 years of resources before they ran out.
All that proves is that the simulated model is unstable and self-limiting. It is just a simulation, and therefore has its limits. It all depends on the assumptions made in the modelling and the limits being modelled and tested.
A simple "video game" analogy: if I try to spin most aircraft (stalled spin) in Microsoft Flight Simulator they just don't behave the same way as real aircraft. These same aircraft will do most other things quite realistically (with some notable excceptions such as collision/damage modelling, but I'm talking flight model here). Turns out the simulator deviates from reality in a couple of subtle ways making it quite hard to model slow flight and the stall. Anything you do under these conditions is wildly unrealistic (though for a handful of freeware and payware addon aircraft, the developers have gone to great pains and managed to fudge it).
What you saw might be frightening but you can't draw any conclusions based on a "crude" simulation, when you don't know what has and hasn't been modelled correctly. That would be like practicing stalls in Flight sim and wondering why the real aircraft behaves differently. The model just isn't correct in the right way to simulate that set of conditions.
This isn't recent. If you read the article the toads were imported in the 1940s to 1960s. They've been a problem for a very long time. I first heard of them in the 80s as a school kid./. news about 40 years too late
Once each time she installs, gets a new computer or does anything else.
Lets have lots of obscure settings that are required just to give you a secure environment. Lets make settings out of the box insecure. Yep. Good plan.
And this comment was modded insightful? Insightful? Because you said it's a stupid and incorrect comment? INSIGHTFUL?
Yeah. Guess what, there are people out there that have a different opinion to you. Perhaps even the opposite opinion. Amazing isn't it.
But don't worry I later got modded down as overrated and troll because/. modding is after all a popularity contest.
The comment made perfect sense. If you're not 100% sure of killing yourself, and somebody steps up and 'convinces' you that you should kill yourself... yeah, it's basicly the same as killing the person yourself.
The statement is false. It's false from a moral standpoint. It's false from a legal standpoint. It's false from a physical standpoint. It's just plain WRONG.
Lets start with the obvious. It's physically incorrect to say it's the same thing to convince someone to kill themselves or to kill them. One requires your cooperation. The other does not. One requires something physical beyond words, the other does not.
Next lets tackle legal. If I convince you to commit a crime, there may be a penalty or a separate crime associated. If I help you plan it for instance that might be conspiracy. If not it might be incitement. Either way the law deals with the act of convincing someone to commit a criminal act separately from participating in the act. This makes sense too. If I push you over the edge so to speak, you still have to take some responsibility for your own actions. (That is key. A person who kills themself is the MOST responsible for their own action).
Which leads nicely into morally. It's very wrong to take advantage of someone's vulnerability and make them harm themself, but that doesn't release the person who is pushed over the edge, and who has a free will from their responsibility.
So basically take your sentimental and inaccurate BS and your unfounded criticism elsewhere.
No, I'm not going to suggest this to my friends. EVER. I'm not going to suggest Linux to my friends either. These are not tools for end users unless they have a lot of time to spend fiddling. Fiddling's perfectly fine if you're interested in computers. But products like these aren't ever going to catch on in their current state. The whole mindset needs to change.
As for being a troll, look up the definition some time. A troll is not simply someone who has a point of view you don't like.
Slashdot Mirror
Man am I glad I don't work with you. You don't see a problem with insulting a total stranger out of the blue for being (admitedly very) wrong, but are willing to admit your insult was inprecise. You must be a lonely, lonely person.
By the way I did notice the link but since typing Ghostscript into google gets you the same, I'd say that is redundant.
Okay, you're degenerating into personal attacks so it's time to quit. I did want to mention a couple of things though.
Wrong on both counts. I did not degenerate into a personal attack at all (except for one, to demonstrate a point), and you have a funny way of quitting.
I don't think it's helpful to tell them it's fine, everyone does it or something to that effect, though. Take my student. If I tell him, no worries, you write fine!...
Did I suggest you tell him it's fine? You didn't say he was YOUR student. You said a student. How was I to know if he's your classmate or your pupil. (Speaking of precise communication!) If he's your student that falls under it being a professional application. If I recall correctly I said you should be getting this student help, and having him assessed for learning difficulties.
Telling him to snap out of it and stop being lazy about language is going to be no help at all.
I can think of at least one creative way to demonstrate how inappropriate imprecise language can be. Give him a fake imprecise assessment/report. When he complains that he doesn't understand what the grade is, give him a better written one. Then point out that he could be teaching in 10 years and that's what his students will feel like.
The point is that accepting things will not improve them. Take your alcoholic. If everyone says "hey, everybody drinks! Bottoms up!" he'll never address his problem. What he needs is a friend to come along and say "you have a problem. You need to do something about it. I'll help if I can."
And if you know anything about alcoholics you can't force them to admit to the problem. You can be honest and tell them they have a problem but you can't make them get help.
By the way, I'd say definitions 2 and 3 of tolerate are most appropriate. Respect the person and endure their faults. This doesn't mean you can't help them improve if they choose to let you.
You can take what I say on board, or you can keep arguing (insisting that it's time to quit of course). That's up to you. If I were a troll I wouldn't be suggesting how you help your student.
"Idiot. Ghostsript" is modded informative? What the hell is /. coming to? Rude ridiculous childish remarks and abusive behaviour are encouraged. That's insane. I don't care how knowledgable you are, or how wrong someone is, starting off by calling them an idiot is just ridiculous.
That is precisely my point. This student insists there's nothing wrong with his writing
Gee there's something new in human history. Denial that there's a problem.
If he has a learning disability then he needs to take responsibility, admit there's a problem and get some help for it or his scientific career is going to be very short.
Agreed that he needs to admit there's a problem. But that's often easier said than done. That's like saying every alcoholic and drug addict should just get over it and stop drinking/using then there would be no problem. Strictly speaking that's entirely true. However, if the person found it was an easy problem to overcome they wouldn't be there in front of you with the condition.
This person may not even be suited to a science career. Just like most people aren't suited to be a doctor or a pilot.
That's no excuse for being hypercritical. You no doubt have your own imperfections, some of which you work on harder than others. There are consequences for not getting aspects of your life right - fail to organise paying your bills and you'll end up with bad credit for example. However if you fail to speak to your friends using correct grammar it's not so serious. (Turning in a chem paper that's incomprehensible deserves a failing grade. That's the consequence. Enough of them, and you either find a different way to do things, or you flunk the course). By the way did you know Einstein failed math due in large part to his dyslexia? Fortunately for all of us he found a different way, and a very tolerant tutor.
Not to mention the student in question started the assignment the night before.
Yeah I hate that too. My fiancee does that sort of thing and I'm trying to get her to break the habit, but its hard. (She's a lot better at not putting things off to the last minute now because she knows I get upset. In fact her general disorganisation get to me, and we're working on it.). However I'll tell you what doesn't work - barking orders at her. Giving up on her doesn't work for me either, because despite her problems (surprise surprise no human being is perfect) she's an absolutely fantastic person - very artistic and I admire her ability in that area (where my skills are lets say limited despite my best efforts).
Having a disability, or even just not being good at something important like communicating doesn't mean you should get an unconditional free pass. It means you're going to have to work a bit harder. The rest of us should support you however we can sure, but you have to put in an effort. It definitely doesn't mean we should accept poor standards from those who are capable of better either.
That's the point. You're setting yourself up as judge of what is and isn't difficult for someone and to what degree, when quite frankly you have no experience in their problems and basically don't know what you're talking about!
Some people can work at it all they like and they'll never be world class atheletes, artists, musicians, scientists etc.
Was it your girlfriend who's dyslexic? Next time someone points out an error you make in your writing tell them (and make sure she hears) "whatever, it's not my fault, I'm probably dyslexic or something. I'm not going to bother fixing it because you should all just respect that I might have a disability." Don't forget to duck when she hits you.
It was my fiancee. I see you haven't even bothered to pay attention (or re-read my post), yet you're being hypocritical and ranting about how important communication is. See how nice that feels? Someone else jumping up and down criticising you. I could just as easily have said "no it was my fiancee" and moved on. Emphasising a person's weaknesses and mistakes is completely unhelpful. You certainly won't get the chance to help them if you put them off side to begin with. In fact you'll be generally disliked and will be the poorer for it.
Also your analogy is awful. My fiancee KNOWS I'm not dyslexic, and it's
I read a lab report by an undergraduate biochemistry student the other day that was incomprehensible. I'm not talking about a few mixed up words or reversed letters or misspellings. The writing was totally incoherent, the product of near or actual functional illiteracy.
See now here's my only major problem with your argument. How on earth do you know that this biochem student doesn't have a learning disability? Has he or she been tested? Is he or she likely to actually tell you if they do have a problem and know it?
Totally incoherent writing is MORE likely to be indicative of a learning disability than just the odd mixed up letter here or there. Dyslexics do not just jumble letters and the odd word. For goodness sake go and educate yourself about these disabilities before you judge people. There's a very very good chance you should be sending this person to an adult reading class of some kind!!!
When someone says that languages are imprecise, it looks like an excuse for not being able to properly utilize the language.
Everyone uses words and language to convey meaning. If you're talking about professional applications by all means criticise. If you're talking about the man on the street trying to buy the morning paper, or any non-professional use of language, get off your high horse and be a little more tolerant.
Every language has a mathematical basis, in any case.
You're talking about the form and structure of every language being based on a grammar I suppose. That's a weak argument, since there are often dozens of exceptions to the rules, and since their is often multiple meanings for each word, which you better hope isn't happening in your mathematical work.
Unfortunately, mathematics and computer languages are not verbose enough to convey actual meaning. How does one say they are sad, when using math?
It's not the verbosity that's the problem. You could come up with a lexicon for "sad" in math or in a computer language, and use it to convey meaning so that's not what's getting in the way of using math or a computer language to be more precise. The problem is the very nature of their precision. Not everyone can grasp complex math, and most people don't want to. It would make life a LOT more difficult if we had to be more precise at the expense of being a lot more rigid and abstract with a more formal language.
No, you'd use a language that most people understood. ...and it would, by its very nature be imprecise.
And a writer with a decent knowledge of a language will use these imprecisions to their advantage - the true beauty of language lies in the fact that a sentence may have many different meanings, depending on the context.
Unfortunately, that "beauty" is the very antithesis of precision. It may be beauty in terms of art but it's a curse in terms of conveying factual meaning. When you formulate a sentence in an every day situation, you don't usually think of three different meanings. With practice you can minimise accidental ambiguity but for most people language is not a professions. When it comes to the written word, journalism and writing (creative and otherwise) that's then a professional application of language and judgement should be applied to misuse accordingly.
Interesting that you insist that you're qualified to assess who does and doesn't suffer a learning disability, who is and isn't dyslexic. I think if you knew the truth you might be surprised. Adults who are unable to read are often able to bluff their way through school etc. where there are qualified teachers supposedly supervising, but you seem to think you have a pretty good hit rate determining who is and isn't dyslexic. The simple fact is people are very good at hiding their problems, especially when they're ashamed of them, or feel stupid because of them.
You're right about the "entire dialects" - that is a cultural change to the language. You're not going to change that though, as people have done this since the dawn of speech to distinguish their group from others and give a feeling of belonging to their members. Not saying it doesn't annoy me sometimes too, but what I am saying is a little more tolerance of the general population would be a good thing. These aren't language specialists you're criticising, they're everyday people with varying levels of ability and education.
defending those who add new imprecision unknowingly... well, it's a practice I find objectionable.
That's a pity, but I don't think you realise just how difficult it is to be precise using everyday language. Looking at your own post: The word is imprecision (plural as well as singular) not imprecisions.
The problem is this. Different people are good at different things and have very different backgrounds. Requiring someone to be good at any one thing, or otherwise getting upset at them, is a silly way to go about things. Imagine being upset at every automobile driver that isn't a mechanic.
Language as a speciality is very different to language as an every day used form of communication. People will be imprecise, and when they are, you ask them to clarify. Most of the time, most people aren't oblivious to it, and simply haven't practiced the precision because it isn't their specialty.
Tolerance goes a lot further than playing grammar and spelling Nazi.
People with disabilities like dyslexia rarely advertise them. Do you know for a fact that most of the people you're bagging don't have the condition? If so how?
The entire point of writing (well, at least this form of writing; obviously, things like novels and poetry are a different story) is to express what you mean clearly and precisely so that people can understand you
Rubbish. If that were true you wouldn't use English, you'd use mathematics, or a computer language. English and just about every language in the world are by their very nature imprecise, open to multiple interpretations, and deeply entrenched in the culture of the day. People who think otherwise are living in a fantasy world.
Some people who confuse similar sounding aren't lazy, but are dyslexic. Most of the time you think about these people not being able to unjumble letters.
e %20for%20Teachers.htm
Btw my fiancee is dyslexic. She didn't learn to read properly until she was about 14 though. She's also very smart (holds 2 degrees and is now a primary teacher). I was doing a crossword with her to kill time the other day waiting to see a doctor and giving her a hard time about some of her mis-spellings, because they were quite funny. I don't think of her as having a problem most of the time because she's witty and intelligent and it's just not the first thing that strikes me. Then later I was watching a documentary and dyslexia was mentioned and I felt like a horse's rear. She tends to spell phoentically because that's how she copes - by sounding it out in her head. She has to work a lot harder to not make mistakes when she's teaching.
So yeah a little more education would go a long way but so would a little more tolerance.
Have a look here. Do a more thorough search if you're actually interested:
http://buckhoff.topcities.com/Dsylexia%20A%20Guid
Besides... it's a 18.65TB PDF.
Man, Adobe sure has managed to get their mits into everything, and everywhere!
No they aren't, you idiot.
/. has gone down the toilet. The guy was totally wrong, and deserved to have it pointed out, and perhaps even ridiculed, but come on a post that starts this way should never be modded up.
This is modded up????
As for you phillymjs, though you were rude an arrogant, your explanation regarding IBM, Compaq and the PC was accurate enough as far as I can tell (and to be honest I can't be bothered researching the actual content for inconsistencies - the spirit of the argument was certainly spot on. However your last paragraph is absolute garbage...
Oh, by the way, a Mac can be bought for $500 that will use your existing display and (USB) keyboard-- it always cracks me up when you guys try to prop up your anti-Apple arguments by bitching about the price of their top-of-the-line hardware while conveniently ignoring their low-end machines.
A basic Mac can be bought for $500. So what. I can buy a second hand PC for less than $200 but it wouldn't be terribly useful to me if I wanted to run the latest games etc. The basic problem here is that if you want to buy a computer to run OSX there's nowhere to buy from Apple at an inflated price. This isn't bitching. If it's capable of running on the hardware, forcing customers to spend more time, money and physical space, is a complete waste of resources and an insult to the users.
Oh and another thing, my experience with Apple has not been good. I use to have an old IIe the salesman fooled my parents into buying when Macs had just come out. Apple also decided at the time that they wouldn't sell through retail chains anymore so as a kid I and my parents were stuck with an overpriced computer that I suddenly had to go to expensive specialist stores to buy software for. Years later I was put in charge of the eMac my employer bought as a test machine. With very little use it died in 2 weeks, and the troubleshooting and support services were awful. I did cave in last year and buy a couple of iPods (one for me and one for my fiance) but I kinda already regret that (even though I do think it's the best music player currently, it's too fragile and I've already had issues.). Apple's an arrogant company that puts the customer last and yet manages to have a good reputation amongst eliteist sheep users. They deserve what they get (as do I for buying those freakin iPods). Apple should have died a long time ago.
Hmmmm....How about The Sims? Does that count?
Huh?? This is modded insightful?
As others have pointed out ad blockers work with broadband too.
If you play computer games, watch videos, download music you generally find dialup isn't usable to grab some of those huge files. A 600Mb game update or a 70Meg video clip isn't going to be 50% ads, even when you consider all the clicking you might need to do to grab it.
If you're talking code snippets, use a well organised directory (one directory per set of related code/project, multiple versions under subdirectories). Biggest advantages: Highly portable and very simple. No reliance on other software Biggest disadvantages: Multiple versions are hard to manage.
I have to confess that since I'm not heavily involved in much hobby and open source work I still use a simple directory most of the time at home (and on my personal laptop). I'm sure some will laugh/scoff.
As you progress move to something like CVS. Biggest issue I have with this is portability. CVSNT (CVS on windows) is not the same as CVS. Cygwin's awkward to run. Access to the repository therefore relies on access to the server software (and a server attached to the current repository). You trade all of that hassle for access to multiple revisions and the ability to compare them easily (at least for ascii - CVS isn't great for binary).
At work our team uses CVS day to day.
Ideally the OS should come with a revisioning system of some description. (Hell VMS had a crude revisioning system built into the file system!). Linux kind of has it by default in the guise of CVS, but its not built into the file system (which I believe is a better way of doing things). Windows unfortunately has a poor cousin, and proprietary solutions. C'est la vie.
Basically, no matter what the students did to conserve, and what they did to increase the resources, the "world" pretty much always ran out of fuel and resources by the year 2020. .... The geologist obliged, and let the students rerun the simulations with a magnitude of latitude, i.e., ten times the estimated resources were allocated! The results then?, about an additional 10 to 20 years of resources before they ran out.
All that proves is that the simulated model is unstable and self-limiting. It is just a simulation, and therefore has its limits. It all depends on the assumptions made in the modelling and the limits being modelled and tested.
A simple "video game" analogy: if I try to spin most aircraft (stalled spin) in Microsoft Flight Simulator they just don't behave the same way as real aircraft. These same aircraft will do most other things quite realistically (with some notable excceptions such as collision/damage modelling, but I'm talking flight model here). Turns out the simulator deviates from reality in a couple of subtle ways making it quite hard to model slow flight and the stall. Anything you do under these conditions is wildly unrealistic (though for a handful of freeware and payware addon aircraft, the developers have gone to great pains and managed to fudge it).
What you saw might be frightening but you can't draw any conclusions based on a "crude" simulation, when you don't know what has and hasn't been modelled correctly. That would be like practicing stalls in Flight sim and wondering why the real aircraft behaves differently. The model just isn't correct in the right way to simulate that set of conditions.
This isn't recent. If you read the article the toads were imported in the 1940s to 1960s. They've been a problem for a very long time. I first heard of them in the 80s as a school kid. /. news about 40 years too late
It's very wrong to take advantage of someone's vulnerability and make them harm themself
Lovely that you can convince yourself that this is OK to do
Either you didn't bother to read what I wrote, or you're retarded. Which is it?
Once each time she installs, gets a new computer or does anything else.
Lets have lots of obscure settings that are required just to give you a secure environment. Lets make settings out of the box insecure. Yep. Good plan.
And this comment was modded insightful? Insightful? Because you said it's a stupid and incorrect comment? INSIGHTFUL?
/. modding is after all a popularity contest.
... yeah, it's basicly the same as killing the person yourself.
Yeah. Guess what, there are people out there that have a different opinion to you. Perhaps even the opposite opinion. Amazing isn't it.
But don't worry I later got modded down as overrated and troll because
The comment made perfect sense. If you're not 100% sure of killing yourself, and somebody steps up and 'convinces' you that you should kill yourself
The statement is false. It's false from a moral standpoint. It's false from a legal standpoint. It's false from a physical standpoint. It's just plain WRONG.
Lets start with the obvious. It's physically incorrect to say it's the same thing to convince someone to kill themselves or to kill them. One requires your cooperation. The other does not. One requires something physical beyond words, the other does not.
Next lets tackle legal. If I convince you to commit a crime, there may be a penalty or a separate crime associated. If I help you plan it for instance that might be conspiracy. If not it might be incitement. Either way the law deals with the act of convincing someone to commit a criminal act separately from participating in the act. This makes sense too. If I push you over the edge so to speak, you still have to take some responsibility for your own actions. (That is key. A person who kills themself is the MOST responsible for their own action).
Which leads nicely into morally. It's very wrong to take advantage of someone's vulnerability and make them harm themself, but that doesn't release the person who is pushed over the edge, and who has a free will from their responsibility.
So basically take your sentimental and inaccurate BS and your unfounded criticism elsewhere.
Encouraging someone to commit suicide is equivalent to killing him.
/. so far this year. You should be really proud of yourself.
Congratulations. That is the absolute stupidest and least correct statement I've read on
Oh, we slashdotters have known about them forever. We call them nightclubs.
Talking to a girl won't kill you. I promise.
No, I'm not going to suggest this to my friends. EVER. I'm not going to suggest Linux to my friends either. These are not tools for end users unless they have a lot of time to spend fiddling. Fiddling's perfectly fine if you're interested in computers. But products like these aren't ever going to catch on in their current state. The whole mindset needs to change.
As for being a troll, look up the definition some time. A troll is not simply someone who has a point of view you don't like.